When I was in high school and starting college in the prehistoric mid- to late-1980s, I guided myself by one book and one book only. It was the one that held all the Truths that other books withheld. No, it wasn’t the Bible. I wasn’t even religious in those days. It was a magazine: an English-language magazine called Rolling Stone.
To me, Rolling Stone represented a little piece of American history — the counterculture, the most innovative, yet mainstream-ready journalism.
I wanted to be Cameron Crowe, to write like P.J. O’Rourke and to hang out with the likes of Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe.
At the time, I was part of a rock band. I wanted us to be the Mexican Hüsker Dü, but sadly, the drummer, guitar player and vocalist were more inclined towards crap like Supertramp. They kicked me out and formed a mildly successful cover band called Black Wind.
I was soon captured by rap, the stuff that’s now called old-school, and tried to create the Mexican Beastie Boys. That group failed, too, because when we were sober we did not sound good, and when we were drunk we sounded stupid. Still, our repertoire, consisting of lame teen-angst lyrics, was a hit at a few small gatherings, got us lucky with a few girls and gave us a way to fight for our right to party.
Then I screwed it up again: I started listening to Public Enemy and became a serious, political rapper, which made me a bore, got me in constant fights with my posse, which finally led to a breakdown.
After that, a series of very dangerous things happened: I grew up, got responsibilities, landed a job. They all led to a vicious thing called money, and then somehow, in a couple of years, my life was revolving around spreadsheets (the prehistoric Lotus 1-2-3), mortgages and fatherhood.
Needless to say, I forgot all about Rolling Stone. Then one day I stumbled upon a copy and bought it, thinking about how that great magazine had changed and become just a promotion tool for the corporate entertainment-industry friends of editor and publisher Jann S. Wenner, who had sold his soul and become a media whore. Or maybe it was that I had grown up and become a corporate whore, too. Whatever. I was not going to let existential doubts plague me when I had work to do and money to make.
The years passed and I ended up living in the United States, bought another copy of RS in one of those fancy coffeehouses filled with books — you know, Borders — and saw that Hunter S. had died. It felt to me as if rebellion was over. I turned on the TV, trying to forget about everything. There was Public Enemy sidekick Flavor Flav on a VH1 show — with Brigitte Nielsen, really thin, veins sticking out of her hand, her skin all flaky, wrinkled and dry, like she just got out of rehab.
And then. . . they kissed and went out to party in New York City. I was watching a reality/celebrity/date show starring Flavor and Brigitte! A sign of the Apocalypse? Maybe. Sure as hell a sign that the revolution is not going to happen and that, as proto-rapper Gil Scott-Heron long ago predicted, it certainly will not be televised.
I felt betrayed — by myself, my peers and popular culture in general. And I blame Rolling Stone for giving me the knowledge to feel that way.
Hernan Mena, a native of Mexico, is the associate editor of the regional Hispanic weekly newspaper, Que Pasa.
This article appears in Nov 16-22, 2005.